PSA: Update your Mac before buying a USB-C Magic Mouse, Trackpad, or Keyboard

3 weeks ago 5

Apple this week launched the new USB-C Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard along with the M4 Macs. While the new Macs won’t arrive until November 8, customers can already buy the new Magic accessories in stores. However, you may need to update macOS before you can pair them with your Mac.

New USB-C Magic accessories seem to require updating your Mac first

As noted by a number of customers who have just got the new USB-C accessories, there seems to be some kind of incompatibility with older versions of macOS despite Apple’s website claiming that they work with OS X 10.11 or later.

Sebastiaan de With, who’s behind the Halide app, reported in a post on Threads that the new Magic Trackpad wasn’t working as expected on his Mac. According to him, the Trackpad “doesn’t scroll or pair correctly for some reason.” And the cause seems to be the version of macOS installed on the Mac.

In the replies to Sebastiaan’s post, more users reported having similar issues until they installed macOS 15.1 – which is the latest version available to the public. Interestingly, reports on the MacRumors forums suggest that the new Magic USB-C accessories don’t work properly on macOS 15.2 beta 1 either.

Based on the reports, the function keys and Touch ID on the new Magic Keyboard are inoperable on macOS versions other than 15.1. As for the Magic Mouse and Trackpad, the scroll and gestures don’t work.

It’s unclear at this point whether Apple has incorrectly listed compatibility with older versions of macOS when the new accessories actually require macOS 15.1, or whether the company plans to release a software (or firmware) update to fix these issues. As for macOS 15.2 beta, Apple probably didn’t have time to add support for the new accessories in beta 1.

Have you experienced any issues when pairing the new USB-C Magic Mouse, Trackpad, and Keyboard to your Mac? Let us know in the comments section below.